So I was doing my normal Facebook Morning Peruse and one of the Humans of New York pictures came up on my news feed. This isn’t the zinger because, I always tend to like or share HONY’s pictures because I love all of the stories that these people share.
Anyway, this was the picture I saw this morning.
Photo Cred: Humans of New York
Normally I don’t read comments on the little sidebar because people tend to be super ignorant when people open up and share their personal stories, which tends to enrage me. Long story short, I read a couple of the comments on this picture, and a couple of people were complaining about her thigh gap. They were saying that because, she’s got a thigh gap she is a poor role model for young girls and an inaccurate representation on how a real women’s body is.
Pause for a second.
What the heck is a thigh gap?
According to my knowledge, when you stand with your feet together, if you have a little itty bitty space in between your legs, you’ve been blessed with the thigh gap. This means that you’re supposedly little and dainty because your legs don’t rub together.
I have a lot of a couple of things wrong with this.
1. The Thigh Gap is a Measurement on How Pretty a Woman Is
The Thigh Gap craze has been around, to my knowledge for around a year-ish, maybe more. I don’t know, the point is, this isn’t new. But people, mostly girls, covet this gap in their thighs because it means skinny legs, and I guess just skinny all together. I’ve been pretty small all my life, and I don’t even think I have this thigh gap. I mean when I sit, they touch? I’ve been dancing ever since I was like 4 years old so I’ve got, you know, legs of a dancer. So my legs are kind of built. This doesn’t make me less pretty than the girl with the thigh gap or prettier that the girl who’s thighs touch.
2. Girls Who Have The Thigh Gap, are an Inaccurate Representation of Women and Just Add to these Body Image Issues Girls Have
If people want to start a revolution to love their bodies and not put skinny people on a pedestal, that have to realize that, skinny people are people too. Just because this poor girl in the HONY picture has got space in between her legs doesn’t make her the Spawn of Satan and a terrible role model for young girls everywhere. If people want young girls to grow up and love their bodies they have to accept the fact that there are going to be skinny people in the world to. We can’t raise our pitch forks at everyone that wear a size 4 and lower. That defeats the purpose. Because the poor little girl who doesn’t have a lot of meat on her bones is going to hear people tell her she’s not beautiful because she’s skinny and now society doesn’t like skinny anymore. That’s when the cycle starts over again.
3. Healthy = Thigh Gap
Having a thigh gap does not guarantee health or happiness. I would hope that everyone is starting to move past the thigh gap craze. Next everyone will start measuring their noses or something to see how pretty we are. It’s terrible that people some places who don’t feel very good about themselves, will go and look to find something wrong with a stranger, in order to build themselves up for only a second. Thigh gap or no thigh gap, us women need to stick together. Maybe when we do that, we’ll all see each other as beautiful.
Briannah. 